DE Vol. 1 pt. 66

Year 1, Days 22 – 23 pt. 3

“You won! We won!” Enna cheered, sounding the most energetic that I ever heard her up until then as she practically bounced against my side.

I wished that I could have enjoyed that a bit more, but it was hard knowing that we were only celebrating due to senseless violence that just so happened to benefit us.

Now, I was the kind of man who believed it was the people’s right to own fully automatic machine guns, functioning tanks, and personal nuclear warheads for the sake of self-defense and defending one’s property. Well, maybe the nuclear warheads part was a bit of an exaggeration, but still. The point is that I believed in the people’s right to arm themselves as much as they could.

But wanting the people to be able to protect themselves against all possible threats is not the same as wishing for violence. Ultimately, I was a pacifist—a pacifist who believed in carrying a very, very big stick around just in case. But no matter how much I idealized pacifism, I knew that it was foolish to ever hope for a world where the people could be protected without violence.

It didn’t matter if it was a “game.” It didn’t matter if those who died were going to return to their worlds without any injuries.

What mattered was that I sent people into harm’s way while sitting back and watching.

If two people wanted to consent to beating the shit out of each other in a boxing ring, that was perfectly alright.

But that wasn’t how war worked. Even if people technically consented to the potential of hurting and killing others by enlisting in the first place, having to kill on behalf of a superior’s order was different from engaging in a casual competition of strength.

Video games? Fine. Violence is fun. Kill raiders trying to attack your base, butcher their corpses, use their meat to feed your colonists and use their skin to make human leather furniture and clothing—that’s all fun. It’s a game. Nobody is actually getting hurt and there’s no corrupt system at play.

But this…

“This is no reason to celebrate,” I said, finally breaking my silence.

“Cl-Clay?” Enna asked, that energy from before leaving her as worry filled her eyes instead.

I caught myself being a hypocrite before saying anything else.

I was not nearly as affected when we took over Hylrmenel. Yet, now that we lost one of our own units again, I felt upset.

Most people would probably consider it normal to put the lives of their own soldiers above the lives of their enemies, but I hated that. That sort of belief was what led to dehumanizing the “others” to make them easier to kill. It was what the media corrupted the people into believing. It was why losing a handful of innocent civilians to a terrorist attack was a tragedy yet the wholesale slaughter of innocent children overseas was a statistic.

There were no winners in war. Only survivors and victims.

Every death, regardless of which side the death belonged to, was a tragic one. That, I genuinely believed, which was why I was so disappointed in myself to realize I was being a hypocrite. No matter how much I genuinely believed that—or rather, no matter how much I thought I genuinely believed that, I realized I was being a hypocrite. I was all too satisfied to take Hylrmenel at the cost of our enemy’s lives while we didn’t lose any of our own units. But now, after taking another of their settlements, I was upset we lost a single unit.

I always believed I was the kind of man who would have just as much sympathy for the enemy as I had for our own forces, but I was proven wrong.

I didn’t know how to feel about that. I was sure it was normal to feel that way considering most people unashamedly cheered for the defeat of their enemies while mourning the losses of their allies, but I thought I was above that.

I wasn’t.

“Clay?” Enna asked again. “What’s… what’s wrong?”

There was something more important than my feelings, though. My feelings could be dealt with later during some classical can’t-sleep-at-night introspection. Everybody else was happy, and it would be a shame to ruin their spirits, and also insulting to the Volcano Hounds who were killed.

At the same time, pushing aside my personal feelings for the sake of everybody else’s happiness—that was hypocritical as well. I was a man who believed that everybody should always fight for what they believe no matter what it was and to never hide their true feelings.

So, what was I supposed to do?

I could either go into a lengthy monologue about my feelings that even I struggled to understand, which would basically end up with implying that nobody should feel excited over the victory due to the loss of life, or I could ignore my feelings and let them feel happy because of a victory that many of them were anxious about ever since the war declaration.

Reduce morale for my own conflicted feelings, or bite my tongue and let them celebrate like any normal group of people would want to after such a victory.

“Relax, Clay,” a different voice said into my ear opposite of Enna, speaking with a quiet enough volume that I almost didn’t recognize her at first. “I know how you feel,” Zira said. “Just for today, convince yourself that this is a game. Nobody met eternal death today. While I am sure those Volcano Hounds are going to be disappointed at their sudden deaths, they have already been returned to their home where they may reunite with their families and friends, as have our enemies. Remind yourself of that, so long as you do not use it as a crutch to always fall back on.”

She was right. That was probably the best thing to do. I was just… afraid of using the logic of it being “just a game” when real people were involved. I was afraid that by treating real lives as I would characters in a game, I would inevitably come to blur the line between what was a game and what was reality. I didn’t want to become anything like one of those leaders who saw those serving them as sacrificial pawns.

The universe had enough of such leaders.

Before I could look at Zira to reply, she was already over by a couple of Volcano Hounds to scold them for getting hyped up and wrestling too roughly. Volcano Hounds… were really bad at showing restraint, hence why they were both covered in bloody cuts from each other’s claws and getting blood everywhere. Some of it even splashed onto my pants without me noticing it.

Anybody who didn’t know what to expect with them would probably think they were trying to kill each other, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. If they killed each other, they would no longer be able to play with each other, so one party would eventually submit so that they fight can continue another day.

More importantly, I looked at Enna and finally gave her an answer. “Sorry for worrying you. I’ve just got a lot of conflicting thoughts in my head right now. Nothing’s wrong, though. Promise.”

Enna didn’t look too convinced. “Are you sure? If anything is bothering you… you can talk to me.”

“I know, and I’ll probably talk to you about it later, but it’s not important right now. What’s important right now is following through with our plan. We might have won that battle, but this war isn’t over yet, and I doubt that they’re going to be happy about us taking a second settlement from them. But for now… we can relax for a little.”

The northern group of units, which included the one Kaila was attached to, were going to need all of their movement points if they wanted to merge together and go after the Viking Elves’ capital. So, until it was a new day, there was nothing else we could really do aside from celebrate.

Well, the others could celebrate. I didn’t exactly have it in me to join the celebrations, but I thought it would be a good idea to at least hang around them while they partied. I figured that having their leader with them would be good for morale even if I wasn’t in the mood. Besides, as long as I focused on looking at our new settlement, I would just look focused rather than upset.

So, that was what I did.

The settlement we captured, becoming our fourth settlement in total, was named Ynlara. I assumed it was pronounced Yin-ill-are-ah just going by how Hylrmenel was pronounced. That aside, the settlement… was not producing much. The happiness total it had was even lower than I expected it to be. One, its happiness was debuffed due to being recently conquered. Two… its happiness was debuffed due to us apparently going over our soft settlement limit. As it turned out, without anything or anybody to warn me of this beforehand, we could only have a total of three settlements before taking a hit to happiness.

That meant Ynlara was at a grand total of… zero happiness.

Hylrmenel, which was starting to recover, was also hit by this and back in a dangerous area for happiness.

New Liberty and Mount Hound were in a safe range for happiness, so I didn’t need to worry about any rebellions or anything with them, but they still took some strong hits which meant we were no longer gaining any bonus buffs to our production in those settlements. That meant all of our daily incomes got nerfed in every settlement with Ynlara outright producing nothing at all. They had zero labor to help us build anything over there and, even worse, had negative food income. That meant their population was going to die out from starvation if we couldn’t fix it somehow.

And I had no idea how to do that.

Doing some quick math in my head, it would take eleven days for Ynlara to regain enough happiness that it was breaking even for food again. But with five population units over there, each one typically consisting of at least ten to twenty people, how many were going to suffer and starve to death before their food balanced out?

It wasn’t just the settlements that took a hit, either. All of the military units got hit with a debuff to morale as well as increased food upkeep to sustain them.

We won the battle, but it ultimately hurt our situation more than it helped us.

At the same time, as far as I was aware, the Viking Elves had no idea about Mount Hound and New Liberty. It was safe for them to assume we had one more settlement besides Hylrmenel and now Ynlara, but not more. If they knew about the settlement soft limit, then they would think we just hit it but didn’t go over it.

Taking their capital suddenly became an idiotic idea since that would only screw us over even more. I could raze it or just ransack it, but we struggled enough when our units were at their full capabilities and I doubted that such a cheesy tactic would work against them again.

The war wasn’t going to be won due to that settlement cap.

But, I could try bluffing them into peace.

As for Ynlara, keeping it was a bad idea, but I wasn’t going to hand it back over, either.

All that really mattered was grabbing those Living Forest tiles, anyways, to deprive them from the Viking Elves. As long as we could do that, the war was successful enough for us.

I figured it would be best to let the Viking Elves sweat for a day, though. I doubted they were up for surrendering at the moment. Probably too mad to do so. Give them a day to calm their heads, push on their territory a little more to make them feel the pressure, and then offer the deal I had in mind.

I just had to hope they were going to accept it.